Stage Door: Isabelle Huppert is "The Mother"

Since we're in the thick of theater season with the Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Tony Awards coming up, that means an extra stage review here and there! Here's Eric Blume...

One of TFE’s favorite actresses, Isabelle Huppert, currently stars off-Broadway in writer Florian Zeller’s new play, The Mother.  As you might guess, she kills it in Zeller’s non-linear play. The Mother is challenging and archly theatrical, with scenes being acted and re-enacted, timelines being blurred, and reality and fantasy being blended in gloriously unclear ways to achieve both a distancing and an immediacy.  This is intelligent and precise writing, not an easy ride for theatergoers, and demanding in its shifts both temporal and stylistic.

But Huppert is deep in character as always, sinking into the skin of the matriarch in the four-person family play...

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Stage Door: "The Prom" is a delight

by Dancin' Dan

The Prom caused a big splash at the Thanksgiving Day Parade last year, giving us the first same-sex kiss ever aired as part of the parade broadcast. The uproar that followed almost single-handedly justified the musical's existence, proving that maybe the world does "really need" a musical about a bunch of past-their-prime Broadway stars who travel to Indiana to help a young gay teen who isn't being allowed to bring her girlfriend to prom. If that plotline makes The Prom sound insufferable, a hopelessly pandering piece of liberal agitprop designed to make the Broadway audience feel oh so very good about themselves for having the same morals as the show's creators, well... that's not exactly the case. The Prom has more up its sleeve than that, and it all comes down to the show's tone.

It's clear from The Prom's first scene that the musical's main target is not the people of Edgewater, Indiana, but rather the vainglorious Broadway stars who insert themselves where they don't belong...

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Stage Door: The misunderstood, exquisitely sung "Superhero"

by Nathaniel R

Don't let the title fool you though it's not at all deceptive. Tom Kitt's (Next to Normal) newest musical both does and doesn't involve superpowered do-gooders. This anguished but gorgeous intimate drama is, more specifically, about a teenage boy who loves comic books (new find Kyle McArthur who has been with the show since its developmental process). The boy is still reeling from the death of his father two years before the play begins. He loves to draw superheroes which we see projected on to the stage at times. His widowed depressed mother (Kate Baldwin), struggles to connect with this typical juvenile obsession ("What's Happening to My Boy?") especially since they really need each other given the sorry fate life handed them.

Early in the musical the boy becomes obsessed with a mysterious neighbor who he is convinced is either a superhero or supervillain --  the jury still being out...

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Stage Door: Kiss, Me Kate

by Dancin' Dan

“I hate men,” sings Kelli O’Hara in the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and the audience applauds in agreement. It may be a bit counterintuitive, but right now feels like exactly the right time to revive this golden age musical, about a formerly married, constantly bickering couple starring in a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. It's the right time to go to the theater and see a farce where a woman gives as good as she gets from a powerful, abusive man. And Scott Ellis’s sparkling revival delivers, with a little bit of help from some “additional script material” by Amanda Green, and a lot of help from its dynamite leading lady.

This is the best Kelli O’Hara has been since her performance as Nellie Forbush in Bartlett Sher’s 2008 revival of South Pacific...

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Links: Mike & Maleficent & Marvel & The Mother

• Spirit Airlines are decorating their planes to "soar" with Dumbo. That seems like a costly promotion, there!
• Slant ranks all the Marvel films. I found this interesting because it's a) insane and b) the people they've assigned to write up the movies dont necessarily agree with their ranking in the list so it's weirdly schizophrenic
• /Film confusing and bizarre history of Captain Marvel in the comic books
• THR Idris Elba in talks to replace Will Smith in the Suicide Squad sequel

After the jump Maleficent 2's teaser poster, Gregg Araki's new series, Rock Hudson, Magic Mike casting, and more...

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